Christina Ricci Is Over Being Treated Like an Idiot

While Christina Ricci may be fondly remembered as The Addams Family's creepy kid Wednesday, her latest role as the complex, charismatic, and very adult Zelda Fitzgerald totally nixes the cuteness factor.

Who exactly was Fitzgerald? Wife to F. Scott Fitzgerald, a sometimes writer, and a mentally ill alcoholic? At least, that's the basic idea we've previously been sold of the '20s-era artist and feminist trailblazer. In the new Amazon show, Z: The Beginning of Everything, Ricci paints a much fuller picture. Opposite American Crime's David Hoflin as F. Scott, Ricci rocks a flapper-style blonde bob, chugs champagne, and expertly shows us the grim inside of one of history's most notoriously toxic relationships.

Coincidentally, Ricci's is actually the first of three upcoming Zeldas–Jennifer Lawrence will play her in the film Zelda, and Scarlett Johansson will take her turn in The Beautiful and the Damned. Ricci's version—she's also an executive producer on the show—gets there first, premiering on Jan 27.

While her toddler son Freddie took a nap, we chatted with Ricci about her struggle to get serious leading roles, learning ballet, and why she thinks the next generation of women will deal better with misogyny.

On why she took the role

"I really liked the perspective the story is told from. What's the point of doing this story again? We've all seen it a million times. This story has not been told from Zelda's point of view. We've never had an account of their life from a perspective that doesn't immediately dismiss her as being a crazy alcoholic woman who ruined F. Scott's life. It kind of brought these characters down to people who were in a bad marriage. I think in order to debunk a lot of things that have been said about her, you have to sift these people down to their humanity."

On how she found the real woman within the mythical Zelda

"It's hard. At a certain point you have to draw your own conclusions. For an actor, you make choices that you don't necessarily know are right or wrong. I read about four biographies and read as much of her writing as I could get my hands on. You just try to come up with who you think this character is. What I relate to is that she has this recklessness. I think that is very much somebody who's not really taking in the world around them in terms of what is expected of them, and how they should behave. I have that from my very specific background. Being Zelda Fitzgerald in small-town Montgomery I think was a lot like being a child star. Zelda immediately became again even more famous when she got to New York. I think that that kind of fame and that kind of treatment definitely cuts you off from what's expected of you."

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On how she deals with her lifelong fame these days

"It's such an unnatural state and something that happens to so few people, that I don't know how anyone could tell another person how to handle it. I played a lot of mental games with myself when I was a child to not feel the pressure of it or the strangeness of it all the time. I think it's nearly impossible unless you're really good at ignoring everything else...I think [the Fitzgeralds'] fame is a huge element of who they are and their story and why what happened to them happened to them."

On taking the '20s flapper chic look home with her

"I ended up cutting my hair into a bob after...but it's not the most flattering period for somebody of my height. Unless I had a costume designer actually tailoring all the clothes and making everything flattering, it's not really a period where I suit that exact style and shape. Shapeless is not so good on five feet tall."

On the show's serious dancing scenes

"When I was a child my father was obsessed with the '20s dances. As a kid, I remember doing the Charleston with him. For the ballet stuff [in the show], I did five weeks of really intense training just to be able to get up en pointe. We also had a dance double who was really good. I don't want to say that that was me most of the time because most of the time that's her. Credit where credit is due. I was the first person to say, 'Why don't we use more of the dance double? She was really good. Honestly, it's okay. Use the dance double.'"

On the Zelda-issance

"I don't think we would have gotten the green light for our show if there were [already] two other movies being made with huge movie stars. I don't think our show would actually have been made. I was thrilled that this worked, that we actually got to do the show."

On the fight to be taken seriously

"The sad truth is that it's usually the other women who are not taking you seriously. The reason misogyny doesn't really seem to lessen as much over time as other social problems is because I think women really buy into it and perpetuate it in a lot of ways. I'm excited about this next generation coming up because they don't seem to have those issues."

"I do have to fight to be taken seriously. Being very small and young-looking and an actress?"

"I do have to fight to be taken seriously. Being very small and young-looking and an actress? Oh my god. People are just like, "Well, this one's an idiot. Clearly." I'm learning how to manage that. I think that for me, though, in terms of fighting stereotypes or fighting to be seen in a different way, this show itself is a huge example of that. I'm not a traditional leading lady. I don't look like one. I don't act like one. I've never in my life been cast in this sort of romantic lead. But you have to fight for yourself, nobody is going to do it for me. I'll do it myself."

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